Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the effect of the capped expenditure process on funding for NHS trusts.

As set out in the Spending Review 2015, National Health Service funding will increase by £8 billion in real terms by 2020-21, compared to 2015-16. In this year alone, real terms NHS funding is £1.7 billion higher than last year and £5 billion higher than it was in 2015-16.

As with all public services, local NHS areas need to live within the budget agreed – otherwise they effectively take up resources that could be spent on general practitioners, mental health care, and cancer treatment. As part of their financial planning, NHS England and NHS Improvement have been running a process to look at how a small number of areas could do more to balance their financial plans, as many already have.

It is important that these plans are consistent with constitutional standards on waiting times and patient choice. It is right that the NHS should consider efficiency savings such as reducing delayed transfers of care, or reducing running costs – because this improves patient care overall.